Weekly 5-10 minute writing prompts from feather anchor adages.
28.9.10
WK.04 - Suddenly, it struck her... 10 MIn Go!
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Suddenly it struck her that maybe there was no way out of the psychic wormhole she’d inherited. Poor thing, her mother hired a nanny when she was born. She didn’t want to wake in the middle of the night to tend her hungry infant. Karen, Lorna, the tramp from Wisconsin, Mrs. Spite, Mrs. Lovell… a series of women paid handsomely to cleanse wounds, comb tangled hair, teach cursive writing when the time came.
Chronic ear infections plagued her early years, sticky drainage plastered her hair to her face when she woke. Eruptions of exematic blisters cracked her tiny hands. Her painful ailments were mostly ignored unless the school called, or a fever or infection was brewing.
She suffered mostly in silence. Afraid to draw attention to herself for fear she’d be raped or locked in the closet – But that is another story.
Her mother never seemed to notice the ugly red stretch marks that crept across her daughter’s growing hips and breasts when she was in the fifth grade. Shameful, she started her period years before her peers. She rode the Amtrak alone that summer, all the way from Portland, Oregon to Berkeley, California just so her grandmother could help her purchase her first brazier. 34 DD.
Selfish and self absorbed, her mother was a beauty. Long, bleached blonde hair and slim legs that went on for miles. She’d done a stint as a runway model for department store fashion shows. A walk in dressing room and closet was crammed tight with her hip designer clothes.
With all the drugs and the drinking that went on, there was no time to ask her little girl how she was doing in school, tuck her safely into bed at night, or protect her from harm.
Ten minutes to write, a lifetime to process. She knows she isn’t as careless as her mother, but fears that some of her mother’s selfishness has seeped into her heart and can not be rubbed away.
Suddenly it struck her... "this is it. This is all you have and there will be no more". Unfortunately, for her and for everyone around her there was no real context to what struck her. She was sitting having coffee with her old college friend. At one of those pathetically trendy little coffee shops downtown, but not quite downtown. They had been talking about all the changes (all the various decors and styles) they had gone through in the last ten years, and all the husbands (a grand total between the two of them of 6). And as she sat there sipping her coffee the thought struck her. But that was a deep thought and she didn't have those. In fact she had trained herself over the years to specifically avoid thoughts that looked like they might try to be deeper than where to eat dinner or what was playing at the theater. She carefully avoided situation where she might be asked her opinion on politics or the news. She hid from anything that pretended to be culture. Yet, there it was, sneaking up on her asking her to look at herself and what she had become. Little more that an empty shell that frittered away every thing that had ever even meant anything to her. Empty and alone and tired and scared. With a cup of coffee in her perfectly manicured hand. And that was it, there would be nothing more. Because that would require that terrifying look in the mirror. The one that told her she wasn't good enough, or smart enough. The look that told her she had done terrible things to good people and had walked away laughing. The look that told her she really was cruel and heartless. She took a deep breath, shook her head to clear it of the tragic little thought. And threw her coffee in the waiters face.
Suddenly it struck her the lack of wisdom of being pulled by a renegade whale into the darkest blue that freezes the brain so hard it turns into a barnacle, left side of the leviathan cheek. Suddenly it struck her, if her fingers were any longer they would resemble branches constantly wanting to touch the stars, the stars. Suddenly it struck her, acceptance is being silent for nine months inside an oyster.
Suddenly it struck her, the reason for all the folderol, her father wrapped in fleece, the foolish cows, their noses buried in fodder, the forced hilarity, the false friends, the reason was simple, she could not imagine why she had taken so long to figure it out. She felt along the wall for the light switch, squinched her eyes against the sudden glare, the Van Gogh print at the end of the hall igniting as always her desire to go home to Provence, well, not home exactly, unless you capitalized the “H” or put the whole word in italics so the reader, the hearer, would know you were merely being soulful, southern France your spiritual home, so far from this plodding ignorant America, where people buy art to match their microfiber sofas. That was the reason, right there, the desolate fantasy that nailed her dreams before they could form out of the fog of her sleep, suddenly it struck her, that explains everything.
Suddenly it struck her. The car's bumper sent her flying into the flooded ditch. She spent a good five minutes looking for her purse before noticing dark ooze mixed with ditch water on her hands. But she was still alive, all that mattered in her profession. Alive and able to walk, although her hip ached and a glitter reflection hung at the corner of her eye. She thanked the gods of forgotten diets for her three hundred pounds. A lesser woman would have died. Neon glare bled from puddles on the pavement to where she stood, tilting toward downtown, wet on her right side, bleeding from her nose, too. Maybe the sonofabitch had knocked fifty pounds off her ass. A girl could hope.
Suddenly it struck her. She didn't see it coming this time. As she slumped to the floor, blood filling her vision, she was relieved.
"It's over for now; it could have been worse this time..."
Her thoughts trail off as her gaze drifts to the floor. What once was color had long since faded to shades of gray but somehow now it seemed even grayer, darker than before.
Something caught her eye, she looked up. All that mattered was finding out what that was. A crystalline dragonfly was hovering in mid-air watching her. It flew away. "I've never seen one like that before." she thought to herself. She rose to go following after it never stopping to wonder why it was that she could see again.
6 comments:
Suddenly it struck her that maybe there was no way out of the psychic wormhole she’d inherited. Poor thing, her mother hired a nanny when she was born. She didn’t want to wake in the middle of the night to tend her hungry infant. Karen, Lorna, the tramp from Wisconsin, Mrs. Spite, Mrs. Lovell… a series of women paid handsomely to cleanse wounds, comb tangled hair, teach cursive writing when the time came.
Chronic ear infections plagued her early years, sticky drainage plastered her hair to her face when she woke. Eruptions of exematic blisters cracked her tiny hands. Her painful ailments were mostly ignored unless the school called, or a fever or infection was brewing.
She suffered mostly in silence. Afraid to draw attention to herself for fear she’d be raped or locked in the closet – But that is another story.
Her mother never seemed to notice the ugly red stretch marks that crept across her daughter’s growing hips and breasts when she was in the fifth grade. Shameful, she started her period years before her peers. She rode the Amtrak alone that summer, all the way from Portland, Oregon to Berkeley, California just so her grandmother could help her purchase her first brazier. 34 DD.
Selfish and self absorbed, her mother was a beauty. Long, bleached blonde hair and slim legs that went on for miles. She’d done a stint as a runway model for department store fashion shows. A walk in dressing room and closet was crammed tight with her hip designer clothes.
With all the drugs and the drinking that went on, there was no time to ask her little girl how she was doing in school, tuck her safely into bed at night, or protect her from harm.
Ten minutes to write, a lifetime to process. She knows she isn’t as careless as her mother, but fears that some of her mother’s selfishness has seeped into her heart and can not be rubbed away.
Suddenly it struck her... "this is it. This is all you have and there will be no more". Unfortunately, for her and for everyone around her there was no real context to what struck her. She was sitting having coffee with her old college friend. At one of those pathetically trendy little coffee shops downtown, but not quite downtown. They had been talking about all the changes (all the various decors and styles) they had gone through in the last ten years, and all the husbands (a grand total between the two of them of 6). And as she sat there sipping her coffee the thought struck her.
But that was a deep thought and she didn't have those. In fact she had trained herself over the years to specifically avoid thoughts that looked like they might try to be deeper than where to eat dinner or what was playing at the theater. She carefully avoided situation where she might be asked her opinion on politics or the news. She hid from anything that pretended to be culture.
Yet, there it was, sneaking up on her asking her to look at herself and what she had become. Little more that an empty shell that frittered away every thing that had ever even meant anything to her. Empty and alone and tired and scared. With a cup of coffee in her perfectly manicured hand. And that was it, there would be nothing more. Because that would require that terrifying look in the mirror. The one that told her she wasn't good enough, or smart enough. The look that told her she had done terrible things to good people and had walked away laughing. The look that told her she really was cruel and heartless.
She took a deep breath, shook her head to clear it of the tragic little thought. And threw her coffee in the waiters face.
Suddenly it struck her
the lack of wisdom
of being pulled by
a renegade whale
into the darkest blue
that freezes the brain
so hard it turns into
a barnacle, left side
of the leviathan cheek.
Suddenly it struck her,
if her fingers were any
longer they would
resemble branches
constantly wanting
to touch the stars,
the stars. Suddenly it
struck her, acceptance
is being silent for nine
months inside an oyster.
Suddenly it struck her, the reason
for all the folderol, her father wrapped
in fleece, the foolish cows, their noses
buried in fodder, the forced hilarity,
the false friends, the reason was simple,
she could not imagine why she had taken so long
to figure it out. She felt along the wall
for the light switch, squinched her eyes
against the sudden glare, the Van Gogh
print at the end of the hall igniting
as always her desire to go home to Provence,
well, not home exactly, unless
you capitalized the “H”
or put the whole word in italics
so the reader, the hearer, would know
you were merely being soulful,
southern France your spiritual home,
so far from this plodding
ignorant America, where people
buy art to match their microfiber sofas.
That was the reason, right there,
the desolate fantasy that nailed her dreams
before they could form out of the fog
of her sleep, suddenly it struck her,
that explains everything.
Suddenly it struck her. The car's bumper sent her flying into the flooded ditch. She spent a good five minutes looking for her purse before noticing dark ooze mixed with ditch water on her hands. But she was still alive, all that mattered in her profession. Alive and able to walk, although her hip ached and a glitter reflection hung at the corner of her eye. She thanked the gods of forgotten diets for her three hundred pounds. A lesser woman would have died. Neon glare bled from puddles on the pavement to where she stood, tilting toward downtown, wet on her right side, bleeding from her nose, too. Maybe the sonofabitch had knocked fifty pounds off her ass. A girl could hope.
Suddenly it struck her. She didn't see it coming this time. As she slumped to the floor, blood filling her vision, she was relieved.
"It's over for now; it could have been worse this time..."
Her thoughts trail off as her gaze drifts to the floor. What once was color had long since faded to shades of gray but somehow now it seemed even grayer, darker than before.
Something caught her eye, she looked up. All that mattered was finding out what that was. A crystalline dragonfly was hovering in mid-air watching her. It flew away. "I've never seen one like that before." she thought to herself. She rose to go following after it never stopping to wonder why it was that she could see again.
Post a Comment